Sunday, October 20, 2013

I got an email from TFC ..."15 days and no posts!". Sorry, tech troubles.

Ok, that's sort of a lie. Well, not a lie but not a very good excuse either. I do have tech troubles on my computer...I also have two computers, thus the current ability to post.

Anyway, enough of the lame excusing.

One more thing before I start this post. Dad, that "yous" in the title is plural for thank you, as in more than one thank you...thank youS. I do know that the 2nd person plural pronoun is you, no s. Ok, back to the post for yous guys....

In all the hoopla of the wedding (yes, I told yous 6 months I'll be using that, 5 to go), I didn't get to say a couple of thank yous that I had wanted to.

First thank you goes to Franco and Gino. Remember them? Not only did they do a repeat performance of the cooking party for like 12 members of my family a couple days before the wedding they also did this.

um...that's not Gino with Franco there, it's their friend Leila who totally helped with all the festivities.

Yup, they took me and some friends and family to the top of the world on my birthday. Franco even carried a heavy-ass 2 liter bottle of wine (along with all this cameras) so I could do my usual kicking-off the new year with a toast.

Gorgeous spot and really fun having friends and family with me this year (I might need to revisit that whole "I like being alone on my birthday" tradition thing).

Second thank you to Mette and Christine. They celebrated my new year on the planet too with some cupcakes, knitting and great conversation. There were a couple gifts as well.

Thanks, Ladies. Sorry about that photo...I was a little slow with the camera, or too fast with the cupcake, depending on your point of view.

Ok, back to the wedding and thank you number three. Friends, check this shit out

No, I'm not pointing out that really nice rug that I crocheted that is on an even nicer pallet that I added wheels to, no neither of those things. Check out the chair. Recognize it? Let me refresh your memory here.

In that blog post my grandma's chair, after I had inherited it, was comfortably resting in my parents' basement in Wisconsin. Perhaps yous don't recognize that room it's in now but it would be my freakin studio. In my freakin house. In Italy!

Point being, thank you number three goes to Bump and Doug (or Dong, as he became known at the wedding). Yep, those very cool cousins of mine, in addition to getting married in Maberga and therefore bringing friends and family who never would have otherwise come to our house, yeah, in addition to that they brought me my chair. Um, that was a really grammatically awkward sentence but it's like 1.15am and I'm too tired to care enough to fix it.

So I was saying that they brought me my chair... my grandma's chair. They brought it as checked luggage. No, I'm not joking. Ask David....he drove to the Nice, France airport to load that 60lbs of pure love and comfort into the back of his Fiat and brought it back to Maberga. It's in its new home for what I feel quite confident will be the rest of its existence. Another awkward sentence, anyway....Note to step children Emily and Graham: when yous inherit the house, and all its contents....just remember that spaghetti that grandma Vienna made for you guys with her homemade noodles and sugo before you have a bon fire.

Let's look at that again

Does anyone besides me think that that is probably the coolest gift they could have given me? And that it's hysterical that they checked a chair at check in as they were flying off to their wedding in Italy?

In case yous are wondering...that ugly ass blaze orange folder on my beautiful chair was my "Bump and Doug wedding" folder where I kept all the important phone numbers and general organization stuff. That's why it's in the photo. I still have it, in case anyone is looking for an accordion player.

As promised in the title, there is also a good bye in this post.

I'm sad to report that olive knitting has lost a reader/commenter, I've lost a friend, and the world has lost a very lovely man. Mike Rowe (aka: Mike in Boulder) was finally taken by the myriad illnesses that invaded his body. He was passionate about and worked hard to save old Fiats, old trains, and old church organs, he loved his job as a school bus driver, and did right by at quite a few cats.

Mike and my paths crossed just once in a short meeting when he decided to buy my 1960 Fiat 600 when I left Denver. I will miss the antique Fiat show care packages that he sent every year, his regular emails that kept me current with weather patterns in Colorado, and his thoughts and comments on my life in Italy...which he was hoping to come to see "if he could get his health issues under control".

Tuesday, October 01, 2013

So, a letter came in the mail a couple weeks back. In all the hoopla of the wedding, I didn't read it. How long do you think I can use the wedding as an excuse for blowing-shit off? I'm thinking maybe 6 months. Anyway, I did notice that it was very nicely printed up with colors and pretty fonts. It didn't look menacing or threatening, there was no euro amount to be paid, it didn't come as a registered letter, and, well, it was in Italian...wedding or no, it was a prime candidate for the bin. And that's where it ended up. On its way to the trash, I happened to see the word RIFUTI in big letters repeated a lot. Ironic, that. The letter was about trash and I was putting it in the trash.

In retrospect, I probably should have read it, wedding or no wedding.

Perhaps you've wondered what happens to the trash that is generated at Casa Cornwell, perhaps not. But, since it's pertains to the story, I'll tell you. We bag it up and drive it out. Like every other italian, we take it to big dumpsters that line the streets everywhere. If I am feeling particularly righteous when taking out the trash, or we've had a greater than normal fondness for beverages that come in glass bottles the night before, I get that glass in the blue dumpster and put the rest in the green one (there is also a white one for paper, and a yellow one for plastic...embarrassingly, I didn't use those two so much). That's how it works, for another two days.

On October 3rd, so I've learned from friends in the past couple of days but should have learned from a letter explaining it to me several weeks ago, those dumpsters will be gone. Italy (or Taggia or Liguria, I'm not sure) has decided to require recycling. Great. Fantastic. It's just what lazy trash-throwers like me need.

Only problem is, Italians came up with their system for required recycling. Italians do a lot of things well, really, a lot of things, but systems and organization...not so much. I really think the Minister of the Environment should have consulted some of his neighbors to the North on this one.

From what I've been able to understand so far, every household was delivered three plastic bins. yes, someone came knocking on doors with bins in hand. I guess it's like trick-or-treaters, Maberga was forgotten, we got no bins. These bins are used to differentiate the rubbish. That's not bad, it's a good idea actually..fairly straight forward. But then it all goes a little Italian. These bins need to be put outside the door, different bins on different days, or different bins for different people for different days or they need to be delivered to specific drop spots on certain days during certain hours...different people have told me different ways that it will work. In addition to the bins, every household was given a year's supply of trash bags to use for the differentiated trash, printed on the sacks was "plactica" "carta", etc. No one knows yet (or couldn't tell me) what the fine will be for mis-trashing but we'll soon find out. Ya wanna know how? Everyone was also given a year's supply of stickers with bar codes on them. Yep, each household has their own bar code. The stickers go on the trash sacks and if the garbage men find plastic in the glass bag, they scan the bar code and your tickets is in the mail, baby.

This system is so ripe for failure it makes the German in me want to cry.

My prediction is that within 6 months every town will begin to look Naples-esc as people start dumping their state provided trash sacks on the side of the road, without the bar codes, of course. Why couldn't they have just done some commercials with a crying Roman?